Stop Accepting Me
Aug 5th, 2009 | By Shannon | Read more in: GLBTQSince I came out a year and a half ago, I have received quite an education on humanity. I am loathe to accept some painful facts about people and their intolerance about things that they don’t understand. Most of them don’t understand because, as they say, ignorance is bliss! It’s so comfortable to say, “I believe what I’ve been taught and it’s much safer and easier for me to accept that than it would be for me to listen to you, try to walk a mile in your shoes and help you work on a solution to your problem.”
One of the lessons that I learned about the tolerant people is that they fall into one of two categories:
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Accepting of me
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Advocating for me
I’m here to get anyone who is in the first category and drag your ass into the second. I want for people to stop accepting me and start advocating for me! Unless you straight people take up my cause, I will have to live my life being a second class citizen because some ignorant people were taught by their fathers who were taught by their fathers who were taught by their fathers that me loving anyone but a man is displeasing to Go.
Do you need inspiration? I read THIS article yesterday and felt such relief and encouragement! Another hetero has taken up my cause because she is outraged at the injustice of all of this.
When my Sweet Melissa came out as a teenager, her parents threw her right back in. Her father held her by the throat off the floor and screamed at her “YOU WILL NOT BE GAY!” – as if she could change the fundamental core of who she was. But try she did. Married for 10 years and had 2 children. She was so miserable that her mom had an intervention to see if she was on drugs because she was in such a terrible emotional state.
“What’s wrong with you?” her mother asked.
“You know what’s wrong with me! I’m gay!” she cried.
It was at that point that her mom moved from unaccepting to accepting. She gave Melissa the money to get a divorce and begin to rebuild her life, which she did. But she still didn’t want to see or hear any gay things and told Melissa not to expect her to march in any parades.
When her mom recently came to visit us since Melissa moved from Michigan to Atlanta to be with me, her mom let her know that if she got married, she didn’t want to know about it. That hurt my heart more than I could ever think possible. This was Melissa’s best friend telling her that she didn’t want to share the happiest day of her life. She was afraid of what the intolerant family members would say and didn’t want to have to hear their angry complaints and attacks or “get in the middle” of a dispute.
That weekend with her mom was a turning point, though. Each day, we had opportunities to talk and share. Each time she brought up a concern, we carefully and respectfully made our argument and moved on with happier activities. Each day, her mom moved a little further towards us and away from her “tolerant” stance. She began to see that Melissa’s family had no right to try to hold her to a standard that they wouldn’t even hold themselves to. For example, Melissa’s father used the argument that it was sinful for us to be together. Yet he is living and sleeping with a woman that he is not married to. If he cannot hold himself to his own standard, how can he complain?
Melissa’s mom saw the love that we had for each other. She saw that all 4 of our children were happy and well-adjusted. She saw how we shared the parenting and the work. She was a witness to a true loving partnership. We were happy and that made our kids happy. All of our collective happiness made her happy and she took that joy right back to Michigan with her.
When she returned back home, she mustered the courage to tell her less accepting family members to stop behaving so badly towards us. She set the tone in her family and they began responding – treating Melissa much more respectfully and lovingly. She moved from her comfortable place of ignorance onto this battlefield to fight for her daughter to be able to receive the same love afforded to her hetero family members.
Victory!
My father and step-mom, Gail, have always been my biggest fans and advocates. They attend my local P-Flag meetings with me and are looking forward to marching in their first gay pride parade in October. My dad said he wants to wear a shirt that says he’s proud of his gay daughter. They are advocates. They would talk to congressman, friends and neighbors if it meant helping to secure me the same rights as a gay woman that they enjoy as straight people.
Thank you to Melissa’s mother and to my parents for ADVOCATING for us. Do I have any heterosexual allies out there that will act on my behalf? You can do so much! Start HERE at the P-Flag Advocacy page or HERE at HRC’s Get Involved page.
We need you, people. We need for you to do at least ONE thing to help advance us. It can be as simple as speaking up when you hear ignorance. It could be supporting candidates that support my rights, writing to your legislators, donating time or money to causes like P-Flag or HRC. Treat gay jokes as if they were racist jokes. Do what you can, please. Thanks in advance…
ShannonAWOP contributing author
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Well said. Long ago an Elder of my Tribe told me this: “Acceptance and tolerance are the same, and I prefer not to be simply ‘tolerated’. A person who gets ‘others’ to accept me is a sign of some degree of love for me, and I wish to be loved as much as possible.”
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I love this article! It has opened me up to a new way of thinking.
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I don’t define acceptance and tolerance the same way. People who accept, they do more than tolerate. They welcome. They own knowing you. They invite you and don’t hide their children from the big ol qweeahs. They introduce you to their circle of friends, which increases the number of people who accept, or maybe advocate in a stronger way.
I think we do a dis-service to others when we insist it’s ‘my way or the highway’
Heck yeah, accept me. Lead by example. It may not be carrying a picket sign at an event covered by the media, but it surely is another path that leads to fuller acceptance, and eventual “louder” advocacy.
I’d rather not shoot myself in the foot by insisting that anyone stop accepting me….accept me, please.
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Sherri…Those words were given to me in the 1950’s during one of the worst struggles to retain some of my People’s lands & lore. After reading your words several times and considering them carefully, (Old Injun’s habit) I realize that your vision and understanding of the term ‘acceptance’ is far superior to mine.
At the time I was given the understanding I’ve always followed, the word ‘acceptance’ was bandied about freely here as ‘code’ for “I’ll tolerate the Indians, but they’re not really welcome in our lives”. As we were here first by centuries, using ‘acceptance’ to sarcastically say we’ll ‘allow them, but we’ll only tolerate them if they keep to themselves’ was an insult. If they’d used ‘tolerate’ it would have shown them for the bigots they were.
I now see, thanks to your wise words, that it’s long past time for this Old Injun to drop my outdated and erroneous interpretation in favor of your much more enlightened one.
Thanks for making me see that I still carry some of the ‘twisted logic’ (?) of those long ago times, even while telling myself I’ve ‘moved on’ from it.
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Sherri
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August 11th, 20092009-08-11T20:58:55ZF jS, Y at 4:58 pm2009-08-11T20:58:55Zg:i a
Aww, Mike…that’s sweet. I think my point here, really, is that there can often be a number of accepted definitions of a word…and if we’re not all speaking the same language, more misunderstandings can occur. Those misunderstandings can widen the gap…I’d love to see the gap disappear.
I think that for some groups of people, acceptance is bandied about (or at least was) as exactly what you say. I think too, as generations evolve…so do words and definition. My kids…youngest a senior in HS now, define a great many things differenly than I do…that’s for sure!
Based on what I’ve read of your posts here…your logic is far from twisted…
Sherri
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I’ve been thinking about another angle, here, too. I think that there is a time frame after one comes out that so many of the “group issues” are just enormous. With women, no matter how old they are when they come out, it’s kind of like a fierce baby dyke stage. One can be 70, and be a young lesbian, growing into the identity that one has just recently accepted for oneself.
The thing is, it takes a while, and a lot of self exploration, for most, to grow comfortable with the new identity themselves. It will take a while for others to grasp this new self identity that one carries, and respond to it with positive thoughts. For parents, it can be scary seeing ones child come out. And not necessarily because of the sexuality itself, but because of all the things that come with that. Being an ‘outsider’ in society, being at more risk for attack, not being given equal rights…along with the very idea of letting go of the dream life that one has created in their mind for their child. Others..friends, associates…have to adjust to this new revelation..and do so with all their baggage..upbringing, religion, hell..just ick factor in some cases.
So, while the person newly out has had time to come to terms…the rest of that persons family/friends/etc need some time.
There can be a degree of impatience..because the world feels so new and different..and we want it to see what WE see.
Enter a relationship…and there’s the baby dyke fierceness coupled with the be a warrior for my partner, my cause, my chosen family. These are all good things…it’s good to protect ones family, it’s good to walk ever forward toward learning and equality…
but we have to give others a chance to find their way as well.
When I first moved south, there were some interesting times. My thought process, and self awareness, and even identity don’t always mesh with what others experience…I get that, I own it. I tend to walk into the world and say Here I am…Love me. Not because I demand it, but because I’m worth it.
There were parents to meet. Parents that had never visited their daughter in her home. But they did. And within a year. The word ‘lesbian’ never passed their lips. The word ‘relationship” never crossed their lips. But, I existed. I was part of a family unit. I was loved and embraced. The first time visiting them, they put us in a room together. Were they accepting? Advocating? Both?
I think that for people in their age group…dealing with their middle aged daughter bringing home a woman…one with three sons no less…they did right fine.
And I think, in their quiet way…they advocate….as well as accept. They may not understand…but they love their daughter, and they love me and my boys.
Baby dyke fierceness is a grand thing, an amazing thing…but on occasion, it’s far ahead of those who didn’t have time to consider all these things in advance. Let’s give those around us chance to catch up….not to slack and look the other way, of course, but a bit of time to ponder the newness.
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Sherri…U make Old Injun blush. Although our experiences are not quite the same (slight understatement), you got me rethinking about what I’ve observed over the years. On the ‘coming out’ issue, being accepted seems to depend very much on the place you were raised. I remember wondering years ago why gays were so hated in some places, especially as they were more acceptable than Indians where I grew up. I suppose if we’d had any black or Hispanic folks they would have been strong contenders for the ‘most despised for no apparent reason’ award.
When 3 of the kids we helped raise in their teens ‘came out’ to us, it was perhaps a bit less traumatic for them as we’d long been advocates of ‘equal everything’ for GLBT people’. I think that our reactions made it a bit easier to come out to their friends, and it turned out that most of them had pretty much quietly suspected it all along. I think they were a bit surprised when their friend’s reactions were all pretty much the same as the majority of their fellow students, sort of ‘yup, okay, can we get to what we were doing’. Awhile after they went public, other teens around here started coming out too, almost like they all didn’t want to be 1st to try it.
I also found some similarities with what you say about coming out later in life and what I experienced on returning here after 30+ years away. The 1st thing I picked up on was how so many Indians had fallen into a pattern of ‘it ain’t so bad, guess I’ll stop fighting so hard for true equality’. It was like I was the most motivated as a result of seeing things pretty much as they’d been in the early 1970s. Admittedly other Tribes, especially in the west, had fared less well and had more incentive to be activists, but it seemed to me that the local ‘non-minority’ folks had stopped changing their views at the same time, and that things were slowly slipping back to the way it was in many areas. It took quite a bit of effort by those of us who were just retiring back here to reignite the old passion for making change happen.
Things really sped up with the Internet. It seems that the ‘net’ has brought so many from around the world closer and feeling more able to effect change. Whatever the cause, it’s great to see more activism geared toward education more than confrontation.
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Sherri
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August 12th, 20092009-08-12T09:06:12ZF jS, Y at 5:06 am2009-08-12T09:06:12Zg:i a
Hey Mike…
the thing about experiences? We all have them, they’re all different, and they color who we are, and how we think….
I can only imagine your dismay to see things slipping backward, rather than moving forward. You, having been away, had ‘fresh eyes’..and could see things in a different way than those living with the status quo. It’s so easy for people to get caught in a rut…not just because things are ok for now, but due to inborn fears, years of mis treatment, prior attempts at changing the system without the support or the tools…
I’m glad those kids had you…it’s good for kids to have a safe place at home to be who they are….
Years ago, when I was still with my ex husband, My brother said to me (we had 6 kids between us) “Odds are, one of these guys will be gay…I hope it’s one of yours.”
I said “me too.”
Even raised in the same home, by the same parents…we had completely different perspectives. Magnify that by the whole world….
We’ve got a lot of work ahead!
Thanks for sharing part of your story…
Sherri
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